Reflection for Good Friday

 Saint John tells us that Christ’s last words on the cross were ” now it is finished.” We know that he did not mean these words in the sense that his death on the cross was an ending – the last scene of a drama, the last page in the book. Nor, as  we know from Easter Sunday, was it a defeat. On the contrary, he was telling us that he had finished the job his Father had sent him to do – to tell us how much s God loves each of us enough to die for us. And more than that, he had come to teach us how to live and how to love.
           The basic and most important lesson during our time on earth is to learn how to love. Christ wore into that lesson the absolute need for self-sacrifice, for death to ourselves. He said, ” unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit ” ( Jn. 12:24).
          He compared us to fruit trees that, in order to produce good fruit and a rich harvest, need to be pruned. The fruit of all hum life is to love, to love God, to love ourselves, and to love one another. Thi fruit is never prod in our lives except through cutting back our own selfish desires, by death to our own pursuit of power, pleasure, and self-interests.
        That is how Christ lived. Though, as Saint Paul tells us, he was tempted by the devil to seek his own glory. Christ rose from  the death in the glory of a new life. Each day in his own glory.
         May God’s love bless you all
         Fr. Dominic
         Your brother in Christ